


Lo! as that youth's eyes burned at thine

by summerdayghost



Category: The Picture of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde
Genre: Alternate Universe - Always a Different Sex, Canonical Character Death, F/F, Irony
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-03
Updated: 2019-09-03
Packaged: 2020-09-27 19:02:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,017
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20412754
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/summerdayghost/pseuds/summerdayghost
Summary: The daisies perished completely the night Sybil Vane did. Basilia never learned about that particular detail, nor did she ever see it.





	Lo! as that youth's eyes burned at thine

**Author's Note:**

  * For [reine_des_corbeaux](https://archiveofourown.org/users/reine_des_corbeaux/gifts).

> The title is taken from Dante Gabriel Rossetti‘s sonnet Body’s Beauty which was written to pair with his painting Lady Lilith.

Now, Basilia knew all about the story of the Trojan War. She knew about Helen, the face that launched a thousand ships. What she wouldn’t have given in her youth to have seen sweet Helen, even if meeting Dorian has soured her the memory of such adolescent fantasies. There was no way the Helen of myth, Paris’s Helen, could ever compare to lovely, lovely, lovely Dorian. She knew about swift footed Achilles, the great and glorious golden warrior filled with rage and grief. She never about Odysseus and his wiles.

She even knew about the question that technically started the whole thing. Who was the most beautiful, Zeus’s wife, Hera, goddess of marriage, Zeus’s daughter, Athena, goddess of wisdom and battle strategy, or Zeus’s aunt, Aphrodite, goddess of love and beauty? As far as Basilia was concerned that should not have even been a question in the first place. At least not one asked seriously.

***

When Dorian posed for the painting they were in a garden. She sat with a bouquet of violets in her lap and a circlet of roses, poppies, and daisies wrapped around her head. Those were about as many flowers as Basilia could afford for something like this. She would have liked to have gotten more, but she supposed she was lucky. All she really needed were the violets.

Sappho’s poetry had stumbled into Basilia’s life as she was making her exit from girlhood and running towards womanhood. It had been a strange time, and her heart wrapped itself in the verse like a blanket on a winter’s night. Without such a luxury she was not sure where she would be today. Most likely a frozen corpse.

Shortly after meeting Dorian she decided to reread the old favorites. At the time she assumed this instinct was a whim spurred by nostalgia, but as soon as she got to the back cover she began to wonder if she had been divinely inspired. Every single word of every single fragment was about Dorian and Dorian alone. Thousands of years stood between Sappho’s death and Dorian’s birth and yet it was undeniable. Dorian was the girl with violets in her lap. It was as simple as that.

Of course reality was modest in comparison to the picture Basilia painted. Dorian herself was the exception to prove the rule. Nothing could surpass that real her. However the flowers were no exception. No exception at all.

Basilia painted every single flower she had so much as heard of let alone seen. They dominated the background more and more until Dorian was in a sea of flowers. If Basilia was not careful perhaps they would drown the fair maiden.

The whole time she worked a John Everett Millais painting called Ophelia stayed in the back of her mind. It was a lovely girl (not a quarter as lovely as Dorian but still lovely, lovely, lovely) laying in a lake surrounded by flowers. She had admired it ever since she first laid her eyes upon it. Sometimes she even dreamed of it.

Not a moment of thought was ever given to why the girl may have been in the lake.

***

Out of Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite who was the most beautiful? To Basilia the answer was obvious. Aphrodite, Aphrodite, Aphrodite every time. Why someone might ever answer differently she had no idea.

***

The flowers were already wilting before Basilia managed to even finish the painting. It was too subtle for Basilia to notice herself. To be more specific the daisies began to die the moment Lady Harriet heard Dorian’s name for the first time.

Some things simply could not be helped.

***

Basilia had never been and never would be the marrying type. Maybe if she lived in a different time or world marriage would be what she would be looking forward to most in life. She was, after all, little more than the romantic fool she was deep at heart. But the thought of having a groom, being a bride to a groom, was deeply unpleasant. She did not like to dwell on it for long except in the occasional self indulgent day dream of a wedding that did away with the whole groom part.

When Basilia thought of Hera she thought first of all that and second of practicality. Practicality could be many things, but beautiful it was not. It would never be beautiful unless it needed to be for that is its nature. There is far more inherent beauty in desire than necessity.

***

The daisies perished completely the night Sybil Vane did. Basilia never learned about that particular detail, nor did she ever see it.

***

Basilia had read enough poems of honor and glory and bravery and heroism to know that there was beauty in war. That being said the beauty did not come from the war itself. The beauty came from the people in the war. War itself was hideous at its best and a blank canvas at worst.

Athena was war and for that reason alone she was disqualified from being the most beautiful of the three goddesses. This was not the worst thing for Athena. While beauty was everything to Basilia she knew it was not everything to the world no matter how much it should be. Athena was clever and the world needed her to run. That should be enough in of itself.

***

The last time Basilia ever saw her masterpiece the first thing to catch her eye were the rhododendrons and the begonias. Although she did not recognize it something out there was trying to tell her something. Even if it was a message she could have understood it would have been too late.

***

Love, however, was the source of all beauty. There was no beauty without love, and maybe no love without beauty. Some would say love was its own form of beauty.

And that is why Aphrodite was clearly the most beautiful out of the three. This was a no brainer as far as Basilia was concerned.

(Oh, what did she know?)

***

By the end, every single flower had rotted away.


End file.
